Desire for love, desire for knowledge, desire to possess, desire to desire and to be desired: our life is shaped by what we want and by our efforts to achieve it. Hailed by philosophers and psychoanalysts as the core of human identity, desire informs not only our actions, but also our dreams and hopes and their sublimation into art and literature.This collection of essays explores how desire is portrayed in modern and contemporary Italian literature, by analysing some of the most interesting literary figures of the last two centuries. The authors of this collection approach desire from...

This book focuses on the notion of desire in late-nineteenth-century Italy, and how this notion shapes the life and works of two of Italy s most prominent authors at that time, Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D Annunzio. In the fin de siecle, the philosophical speculation on desire, inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche intersected the popularization of Charles Darwin s theory of evolution. Within this context, desire is conceptualized as an obscure force and remnant of mankind s animalistic origins. Both Pascoli and D Annunzio put into play the drama of desire as a force...